Help for spine injury victims could be just a sniff away

According to Australian scientists help for spine injury victims could be just a sniff away - researchers from the University of New South Wales in Sydney say stem cells taken from the nose could help spinal injury victims regain movement.

The team have conducted tests on paralysed rats which found they were able to move their hind legs just six weeks after being injected with human nose cells.

For the tests the scientists used special cells, called olfactory ensheathing glia cells, chosen because of their apparent ability to help spinal cord nerve fibres grow.

The nasal glia cells normally help with the growth of fibres linking the lining of the nose with the brain but also helped regenerate nerves in the spine.

The scientists believe the nasal cells offer a great deal of potential and they hope their results will eventually lead to a successful clinical trial on humans.

According to Dr. Catherine Gorrie, who led the research, the cells are very accessible and harvesting them is a relatively simple procedure.

The cells are taken from the patient and more are encouraged to grow in the laboratory and then they are inserted them back into the patient.

The spinal cord acts as the main connection between the brain and the rest of the body.

The research results were presented at a Society for Neuroscience conference in Washington DC recently and demonstrated that rats injected with the human nose cells regained more limb function than those not given the treatment.